An a-scientific paper, poor contribution of NGS to the enlightenment of its members.
Story submitted by Michel de Rougemont
I just finished reading the article « The age of disbelief » in the March edition of the National Geographic.
It is one of the most a-scientific articles about science that I ever could read.
Joel Achenbach, the author, pretends that sceptics have no place in the scientific debates because of their incompetence, their prejudices, their doubts in science, and, last but not least, their alienation to powerful lobbies, as for example the fossil fuel industry in climate matters.
First he makes a nice amalgam between deniers, as for example opponents to vaccine or flat earth believers, and sceptics. He may not have ever tried to learn what a sceptic is looking for, what are the motives of not being satisfied with generally accepted beliefs.
Then he looks for an authority, which we should all obey, that settles the scientific truth, or at least the correct way toward this truth. Here he demonstrates his inability to conceive that such authority cannot exist. Scientific societies can laugh about such pretension, well knowing how chaotic their progresses are. Only IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, not a scientific but a governmental institution created in 1988) and its followers have that arrogance.
Amazingly he affirms: “In this bewildering world we have to decide on what to believe and how to act on that”. I agree with this statement. But for him a sceptic who forged his opinion on contradictory evidences is just making the wrong decision. And since he wants to believe in approximate theories such as the anthropogenic nature of climate change, this is a settled “consensus” that no one dares question.
When he will have looked at disturbing facts that IPCC never explains, as for example that the glaciers began to melt long before the industrial age, that the rate of rise of the seas was already quite spectacular at the end of the 18th century, that two periods of warm have alternated with two cold ones over the past two millennia without having anything to do with the burning of fossil fuels, and that the rates at which temperature or sea level are varying show no correlation with the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, then he may ask why anthropowarmism has installed itself as indisputable dogma within the past thirty years.
He would like science to stay in the realm of rationality, but he is advocating dogmatic views. This article was a poor contribution of the National Geographic Society to the enlightenment of its members.
The only question a Poli Sci major is qualified to answer is “what was it like moving back in with your parents after you finished your degree?”
Now that you mention it he does have a substantial resemblance to Pajama Boy
Sure you’re not thinking of Mr. Maddow?
Not really. They do quite well on Fox News telling us, almost always wrongly, who is going to win the next election. Just ask Dick Morris (who is most famous for playing footie), Karl Rove, Frank Luntz, Pat Caddell, and James Cueball Carville, and at least one other guy who’s name I can’t remember right now.
I cancelled my subscription to NG years ago when it became obvious they had ceased even the slightest pretext of scientific objectivity.
When I picked up this issue in a hospital waiting room, I was so astonished that I mailed it to a friend, so he could see it, too. I didn’t think he’d believe me, if I just tried to describe it.
I had thought that Scientific American was about as alarmist as a national publication could get. I was wrong. NatGeo is right down there with SciAm. Both have jettisoned the truth, or any scientific objectivity. Neither of them allows a single word of scientific skepticism.
My wife brought home some other NatGeo issues her brother had. Each and every one has entire articles, or editorials predicting imminent runaway global warming!
No wonder the public has turned into a bunch of head-nodders. If they don’t think for themselves, it’s hard to resist the constant drumbeat of climate alarmist propaganda when it’s everywhere you look.
It’s with regret that I threw out all my old Sci scams a few years ago, and I have a tinge of jealousy regarding all those folks who have 50 years worth of Nat Geo on their bookshelves. They will surely make for excellent kindling for log fires across the length and breadth of the USA for years to come. Good decision guys.
A number of people have written to the National Geographic web page indicating they will not renew. I contemplated this at the end of 2014 and renewed late. However after such an incompetent article I will not renew.
A better way to send a message is to proactively cancel your subscription and get a refund into the bargain. It’s easy nowadays–most magazines have a page on their sites where cancellations can be made with no fuss. There’s no need for a phone call on most–tho that can be a last resort.
This part made me laugh:
“The trouble goes way back, of course. The scientific method leads us to truths that are less than self-evident, often mind-blowing, and sometimes hard to swallow.”
When has Climate Science ever followed the scientific method?
They run from it like a cockroach scurrying from light.
Here’s another example of NatGeo propaganda, this time about sea level predictions:
National Geographic has very strict requirements covering the nature photographs they publish. No staging, photoshopping or photo manipulation. Complete and detailed information about the photo required. Evidently there had some sort of scandal which resulted in the need for the current protocol.
The April, 2014 issue of National Geographic a 3,700 word article entitled “Can Coal Ever Be Clean?” What I found fascinating, before reading the article, was the attending photograph of Georgia’s Juliette Coal plant. The photo taken from above at twilight or early evening depicts voluminous amounts of tan/brown polluting “smoke” emitting from 4 towers. The smoke diffuses the red aircraft warning beacons creating the image of peering into Dante’s Inferno, at least that is the subliminal message. Laughably, the “smoke” is in reality steam from the plant’s 4 steam cooling towers. I suggest the reader check it out, astounding amateurish.
The article is predictably anti coal drivel.
Read my intro to Ebook Blowing Smoke. Used an EPA image, same tricks.
And the Statue of Liberty on the cover swimming in ocean water was not Photoshopped?????
Yep, I noticed that too — steam as a proxy for smoke!
I stopped receiving the NG Magazine about 6-7 years ago, when the pro-Warmist dogma became too evident to ignore. I actually cancelled my existing subscription AND requested reimbursement on the unused portion. I also did the same with Discover Magazine (I had been paid out several years of subscription in advance)… also asked for a refund of the unused portion of the subscription. If anyone here is a subscriber and is considering not renewing, cancel instead AND request, explain precisely why, and insist on a refund on the unused portion. That sends a bit more powerful message.
Michel de
Rougemont
I just finished reading the article
« The age of disbelief » in the
March edition of the National
Geographic.
It is one of the most a-scientific
articles about science
____
love the word ascientific.
____
not anti, not post, not pre, para ….
just a –
‘without’
: ‘without any scientific behalf’.
Thanks – Hans
***with the printed Mag losing millions of readers post-Internet, Nat Geo, like much of the MSM, is desperate to attract young, online users. Alliance Audited Media has Nat Geo Mag with 3,572,348 Total Paid & Verified as of 6/30/2014, down 10.7% from June 2013 (article below mentions domestic circ of about 4 million):
Nov 2014: USA Today: A faster pace for National Geographic magazine
Revenue pours in from diverse sources – contributions, advertising, books, video production, merchandise licensing and a lucrative cable-TV relationship with 21st
Century Fox. Operating as a non-profit organization, the National Geographic
Society, which publishes the magazine and funds expeditions and research, is
immune to some of the harsh realities bedeviling other traditional news
outlets, such as Wall Street pressure or impatient shareholders…
***Its domestic circulation totals about 4 million (international editions
bring this up to 6.8 million), down from 10.8 million at its peak in 1989…
National Geographic’s Web traffic is escalating, and several apps target
students and nature enthusiasts…
The magazine’s covers and layout have gotten punchier, too.
“Real Zombies” – a story about parasitic organisms – is the November cover
headline. The magazine now has an animal sex column, a scientific look at
how birds and bees do it. There’s a new Q&A feature, interviews with people,
not necessarily scientists, who are passionate about science
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/11/02/national-geographic-evolves-to-newsier-source/18206349/
Wikipedia: John M. Fahey, Jr.
John M. Fahey is chairman of the National Geographic Society, a position he
has held since January 2011…
In February 2014, President Obama appointed Fahey to a six-year term on the
Smithsonian Board of Regents, the governing body of the Smithsonian
Institution. He also serves on the board and executive committee of the
Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History as well as the boards of Time
Inc., where he is lead director; Johnson Outdoors Inc.; and Great Plains
Investment LLC…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_M._Fahey,_Jr.
keep in mind:
National Geographic Wild is owned by National Geographic Society & Fox Cable
Networks (21st Century Fox)
National Geographic Channel is Owned by: Fox Cable Networks (21st Century
Fox) (67%)
National Geographic Channel International owned by Fox Entertainment Group
(21st Century Fox) (73%)
for those questioning the quality, or lack of it, of the Nat Geo channels (which i haven’t watched in years):
2011: Hollywood Reporter: National Geographic Announces Promotions
National Geographic Channels is expanding its global development staff and
heading West under former Fox Reality Channel president David Lyle, who will
oversee its new West Coast Development Office…
April 2014: Deadline: More National Geographic Shakeup: David Lyle Exits
Meanwhile, the National Geographic Channels have done very well
under Lyle and Owens. “I’m exhilarated that NGC and NG WILD are in rude
health with EBITDAs (profits) at all-time highs, and with programming
featuring the most watched specials, series and year in the channels’
history,” Lyle wrote in his memo…
That makes the executive housecleaning puzzling…
Yes, Verfremdung:
alienation – ‘Gentle Tramp on March
13, 2015 at 3:21 pm
Why? This word exists
and means
“Estrangement”
____
Orwell, Freud, lobbyists, green coercers –
here we go again.
Hans
Achenbach touts the scientific method, but forgets that the scientific method is just like the law; it requires an adversarial process to get at the truth.
This is the reason that after > 30 years as an N.G. subscriber I quit it this year. I just can’t pay for the propaganda that passes for articles in this magazine.
That NG article was pure propaganda. The picture of a diorama of the moon landing despite the only scientist to have gone to the moon being a sceptic. No mention of Harrison Shmitt in the article.
We had the papers print article after article about sceptics being like the the people who told Columbus that the world was flat. After finally getting through to the idiots that it didn’t happen (just read any encyclopedia), the same group of people who pushed it write
That the Earth is round has been known since antiquity—Columbus knew he wouldn’t sail off the edge of the world—but alternative geographies persisted even after circumnavigations had become common. This 1893 map by Orlando Ferguson, a South Dakota businessman, is a loopy variation on 19th-century flat-Earth beliefs.
Just give it up!
We also have equation of CAGW sceptics with a fictional movie character and those that don’t want fluoride in our town water. What evidence is there that such opinions are common amongst sceptics? A movie? These people can’t research so unlikely that the conclusion was based on evidence. The evidence for that is more of their ranting.
In the early 17th century, when Galileo claimed that the Earth spins on its axis and orbits the sun, he wasn’t just rejecting church doctrine. He was asking people to believe something that defied common sense—because it sure looks like the sun’s going around the Earth, and you can’t feel the Earth spinning. Galileo was put on trial and forced to recant. Two centuries later Charles Darwin escaped that fate.
The story with Galileo was more complicated than that. He was given a chance and money to publish a convincing argument for it, which he used to alienate one of his biggest supporters until then, the Pope. Charles Darwin was lauded by both the Anglican and Catholic Church at the time, he didn’t just escape that fate.
If you can’t get simple history right, why should anyone have faith that you have done the more complicated science correct? Anyone with science training shouldn’t just have blind faith anyway.
There’s a misspelling in the third paragraph the word alienate means estrangement, oh never mind. Carry on.
Well Galileo was going against the consensus back then, so he is really a poor person to use since it basically breaks his argument up since it is going against the grain, which is what this author is saying is a bad thing. There are so many examples of scientists going against the grin and being proven right and have the evidence to back it up, but often it take the scientific community years or decades to accept the fact and not their beliefs about what they once were taught as fact.
At one point in time about 5 years ago I paid for 12 subscriptions to NG.
I now pay for none, because of their incompetence and lack of professional integrity.
Unfortunately it will have to stay that way.
I’ve been a subscriber to NGS since the 1970’s. I had just renewed when this issue arrived. My wife said, “You aren’t going to like this one”. Got that right. I fired off an email forthwith not only to NGS but to the author who writes for the Washington Post (in fact, the same essay, or nearly so, is there).
My critique to NGS was basically why have they become an “echo” of the Washington Post? If I wanted that, I’d just read the Washington Post and get it first hand. Scientific American, for instance, echoes “climate wire”.
I also wonder why it matters. People that deny the moon landing, and a few exist, don’t read National Geographic (or so I suppose). What is the purpose of that article? Clearly it is the beginning of purification, identifying “us” from “them”.
Echoes of Lewandowsky abound in the article and I agree with you this is the worst, or nearly so, essay I have ever seen in the pages of National Geographic and if they keep it up, which seems likely, I will end this 40 year relationship.
I wrote out a detailed critique but didn’t bother NGS with it until they show some interest. Neither NGS nor Joel Achenbach responded.
The irony is in Lews paper it was AGW supporters that that deny the moon landing , not its sceptics.
Glad that my substrictiption to National Geographic has been cancelled! NG’s coverage of global warming in the name of science in the last decade has been horrific. What I just don’t understand is how so many people can blindly believe articles like this. It’s easy for me to choose what to believe because I have read both sides of the science. I am not a climatologist, nor a scientist. I am an analyst by profession, and have been taught how to think for myself. I rarely believe ANYTHING without listening to both arguments. Most of the warmists I have come across have never even attempted to understand the skeptical argument. This seems obviously true of Joe Achenbach as well. Any bets that he has NO CLUE what the skeptical argument is? Of course not, if a crazy republican senator is making it, then not worth understanding right? Although not a scientist by profession, I have taken enough science classes at the college level to understand that science is NEVER settled. And that consensus never has proved a scientific theory. Mr. Achenbach’s article was so anti-scientific that NG should be ashamed. I notice there wasn’t a place to leave comments online. Perhaps if you have a subscription? Yeah, a great way to foster real scientific debate NG :). So thankful to Anthony for providing us a place to speak intelligently !
Lotta disbelief in the comments here.
Yas obviously reckon NASA is a pack
of liars and full of bad climate science so
yas reckon they lied about landing on the
moon too?
Buncha conspiracy whacks …
Can you show us any ‘good climate science’ and by good we mean in the scientific sense not religion or politics where claims of ‘settled’ unquestionable truth are the norm.
Li D
“Buncha conspiracy whacks …”
Not sure which comments you are referring to but this forum is open to all including you. So from reading whichever comment or comments here that you disagree with you have chosen to connect Conspiracy fanatics with all those that question AGW. The trouble with those that think there are conspiracies (e.g. Moon landings never happened, vaccinations are bad/government plot) is they are not so much questioning but have decided there is a conspiracy. There is no question and there minds are closed. I know the moon landings took place, I have a great respect for NASA (when its doing space things), understand the importance of vaccination and how it has removed many of the serious illnesses, and I wish to see the environment looked after. I started out taking on board all the stuff about CO2 warming the planet and how bad the west is, but I have grown increasingly sceptical of what looks exactly like dogma and also fed up with it.
From what I’ve seen it is just as likely that you will get a someone believing in AGW, who also believes in Chem Trails, Government plots, Moon landing hoax etc. The sticking point for me is the word ‘believe’.
Please explain how the Moon landing could be faked.
Or please explain how past temperature data CANNOT be faked.
Or just keep silent.
Always nice to hear from the young and illiterate. Sadly, I think that even were your missive translated from text-speak to something resembling English, you wouldn’t have added much of anything to the thread.
Li D,
See, it would have been better if you just lurked.
Now everyone knows you’re a tool.
I stopped my subscription to Nat Geo a few years back when it started going green/extreme.
“Its domestic circulation totals about 4 million (international editions bring this up to 6.8 million), down from 10.8 million at its peak in 1989”
Keep in mind, that’s not the typical magazine subscription which has been plummeting in the age of the internet. That’s membership to the society. A magazine comes with membership. If you believe in an organization you become a member, whether it’s the NGS or the NRA. Membership in the NGS has fallen by 60%, myself included. A fail of that magnitude would be a signal to most that the change in direction an organization took in the 2000s, wasn’t the brightest move, and might want to be reversed.
But leftism is a religion, and religious dogma at the NGS trumps all.
“Joel Achenbach, the author, pretends that sceptics have no place in the scientific debates because of their incompetence, their prejudices, their doubts in science, and, last but not least, their alienation to powerful lobbies, as for example the fossil fuel industry in climate matters”
There are literally thousands of top, qualified scientists around the world, who do not subscribe to the AGW religion, yet this stupid man Achenbach, together with the National Geographic Society, has the effrontery to say that they have no place in science because of their incompetence. If the NGA has any backbone in this one sided debate, they should ban this man from ever contributing again, and apologise to its subscribers. If not, I invite all subscribers, whatever their views, to cancel their subscriptions forthwith.
I have always been disturbed by the label skeptic as being referred to people who question the normal circumstances ie the link between man made CO2 and dangerous AGW. To me the natural circumstance and the historical evidence suggests that when warmists make predictions that don’t stack up with the past. Ie it is the warmists who are being skeptical in that they don’t believe what the facts tell you and proof of the veracity of their skepticism they have consistently tried to alter the facts ( including the past) to validate their predictions. There is no greater skeptism than to deny what your eyes see and what are universal facts. Ie there is no pause OR that record cold and snowstorms are proof of global warming.
I would say this to Achenbach; hey, don’t wait for a law to curb CO2, go ahead and get a jump on it, stop driving, stop using electricity, stop flying on jets, stop heating your home, there is a lot you can do, or stop doing.
I spit up in my mouth a bit when I saw the Nat Geo article. Very disappointing propaganda from a formerly respected magazine. It joins Scientific American and Penthouse’s “Omni” in the race to irrelevancy.